The countdown process for the launch of Astrosat, India's first ever dedicated satellite for astronomical studies, is progressing smoothly at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. <br/><br/>The 50-hour countdown started at 8 this morning for its flight on board the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C30 that would lift off from the first launch pad of the space port at 10 am on Monday. <br/><br/>The planned mission life of Astrosat is five years, and its lift off mass is 1513 kilogram, with five payloads to study the deep space. <br/><br/>Six smaller satellites of foreign customers would also travel as co-passengers, including four nanosatellites from the US and one each from Canada and Indonesia. <br/><br/>AIR correspondent reports, Astrosat is often regarded as India's first space observatory, and its speciality is its ability to observe celestial bodies in different wavelengths simultaneously including optical, ultraviolet and high and low energy X-Ray spectrum. <br/><br/>It is tasked with studying binary star systems consisting of neutron stars and black holes, birth of stars, cosmic X-Ray sources and a limited survey of deep space in the ultraviolet region.<br/> <br/>It is set to join the three other observatories in space, the Hubble Telescope of the NASA and the European Space Agency, Spektr-R of Russia and Suzaku of Japan. Indian astronomy research is set to get a boost with the insertion of Astrosat into space.